Lenovo and Google teamed up to create the Smart Display, a smart home hub with a screen that takes direct aim at the $230 Amazon Echo Show.
The Smart Display comes in two sizes — 8″ for $200 and 10″ for $250 — and has an HD screen, two speakers, and a modern design that doesn’t scream “tech.”
Lenovo’s hardware and Google’s Assistant are a perfect match.
The Smart Display has a Google Chromecast built into it too, so you can watch videos or listen to music from dozens of services using apps on your smartphone or tablet.
The Smart Display is easily the best smart home hub I’ve tested — I’m a long-time Amazon Echo fan, but I’m considering a switch to Google’s side.

We’ve combed through all the deals to bring you the best ones in every category, and found all the products that have also been featured in our buying guides. That means these products are the best of the best. We’ve tested many of these items and the ones we haven’t tested are backed by many expert and buyer reviews.

Click on a link to jump to a category and see all our buying guide recommendations:

Those of you who are building a smart home may need the Echo Plus instead of the regular Echo because it has a built-in hub that works with many smart home devices like the Philips Hue light bulbs, so you don’t need dozens of hubs around.

Anyone who has kids and an iPad has probably wished for a more rugged (and cheaper) tablet to give their kids. Wish granted! Amazon’s Kids Edition Fire Tablets are perfect for youngsters. We recommend both of them in our guides to tablets and Fire Tablets.

This bundle has many of our top picks in it: the Samsung Galaxy S9, which is one of our top-rated phones; the Amazon Echo, which is our favorite smart speaker; the Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit, which is our top pick for the best smart home hub; and the Echo Spot, which is an honorable mention in our smart speaker guide. You get all that for the price of the phone alone, so you basically get $340 of free smart home tech.

The Moto G6 is the best budget phone you can buy — period. It has a decent processor, Full HD screen, slick glass body, and decent cameras. Plus, it works on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon without any problems.

As far as iPhone docks go, TwelveSouth makes the best one. The Hi-Rise 2 holds your phone upright while it charges without obstructing the screen or the home button. If you get the deluxe version, you get a lightning cable, though it will cost you a bit more.

Of all the Android tablets you can buy, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S3 stands out because it has an excellent stylus and it looks quite a bit like an iPad. That’s why it’s one of our favorite Android tablets.

Ring’s Video Doorbell 2 is our top pick for the best doorbell you can buy because it has great motion detection, a 1080p camera with two-way audio, and it’s wireless, so you won’t have to hard-wire it into your home.

If you want to have a smart doorbell that lets you see people as they approach your home, the ring Video Doorbell Pro is an excellent option that we highly recommend. It has to be hard-wired, though, so keep that in mind.

Hold on to your wallets: Amazon Prime Day (and a half) officially kicks off at 3 p.m. today, July 15, but some of the best deals are already live.

Amazon’s deals on all of its devices kick off now: You can save up to 50% on select Alexa-enabled products, which include everything from the second-generation Echo to the fashion-oriented Echo Look. And once 3 p.m. hits, you can expect new deals to drop every five minutes (farewell, Monday productivity). Prime Day is bringing massive savings on other non-Amazon tech, including up to 35% on select laptops, “premium brand” 4K smart TVs for under $500, and up to 40% off smart lighting.

Over a million deals are happening over the course of 36 hours, which seems like a good thing until you stop to consider that’s a hell of a lot of products to sort through to find the ones you want. With that in mind, we’re pulling together the top gadgets on sale here. Click through to see our picks thus far, and continue to check back through 3 a.m. on July 18, when Prime day comes to an end.

If you’re looking for a new phone, you can’t do much better than this Samsung bundle, which includes the Galaxy S9, an Echo, Echo Spot, and Samsung Smart Home kit.

Refresh your morning routine and test out Amazon’s machine learning-enabled styling capabilities with the Echo Look. The device, on sale for $100 off, makes it easy to track your outfits and even decide what to wear to a wedding if you’re torn between two dresses.

Whether you want to put an Echo in another room of your house or try the sound-enhanced capabilities of the second generation, now is the time to buy the device. You’ll save $30 through 3 a.m. on Wednesday.

Buy any Amazon Echo device during Prime Day, and you’ll get six free months of Amazon Music Unlimited, the company’s streaming service (regularly $7.99 per month), included.

Looking for an inexpensive tablet to stream shows on the plane? Opt for Amazon’s Fire HD 8, for just $49.99. If you want a charging dock, too, you can get the two together for $79.99 (regularly $109.99).

For the times you need to zone out — or flights when you actually want to hear the movie you’re watching — Sony’s wireless noise-canceling headphones really do the trick. Save $100 on them this Prime Day.

Amazon had a full year head start, but Google and Lenovo caught up on launch day.

As great as a virtual assistant can be in your home, the lack of a display can be limiting. In a perfect world, you’d be able to speak and have your home assistant just respond and be reliable all the time, but a huge number of smart speaker owners are compelled to stare at their little boxes to confirm it heard the command and await confirmation. What these people clearly need is a more interactive experience, so the Amazon Echo Show was released to offer more than just a speaker.

In the year since that launch, Google’s Android Things initiative has been working hard on competing. The first in that line is finally here, courtesy of Lenovo, called the Smart Display.

How do these two smarter displays compare? Surprisingly, it’s pretty close on a lot of things. And that’s not good news for Amazon.

Design and specs

Amazon’s Echo Show is about as utilitarian as you can get. It’s an unassuming wedge with a speaker and a display on the front with buttons up top. This thing is designed to hide away on a kitchen counter or bookshelf and not really catch anyone’s eye unless it is being used. Even the white version of the Echo Show doesn’t really stand out much.

While the 7-inch display does have a touch interface, you’re not going to use it much. Like the Amazon Echo, this is designed to be tucked away somewhere and simply exist. Also like the Echo, the eight-microphone array is designed to act as a far-field system that can hear you more than a room away. And it works really well most of the time.

Audio quality is always a big question with these kinds of things, and to be honest there’s very little difference between the two.

Lenovo’s Smart Display is very different. It’s designed to stand out, to be the central focus of whatever surface it occupies. The white accents and curved bamboo backing make it clear you’re going to want to have this out somewhere to be used, instead of tucked away. It takes a lot more space than the Echo Show because its display sits beside the speaker instead of above it, and the unit comes in either eight or ten-inch variants. Technically the larger model can be swapped to either portrait or landscape mode, but for the moment only a single app, Google Duo, supports both orientations.

As much as Lenovo wanted to enable video chat, privacy was also an important future. A mute button like on the Echo Show is present, but so too is a physical cover for the camera. That way you can have Duo set to automatically answer a call if you really want it, but you’re not going to be surprised when you don’t want to be.

Lenovo doesn’t have a fancy name for its microphone set up on the Smart Display, but in our tests, the ability to trigger ‘OK Google’ worked in just about every situation the Echo Show worked in. There are situations where the Echo Show seemed a little more reliable, but not many.

Audio quality is always a big question with these kinds of things, with so much of what they do being streaming audio or video, and to be honest there’s very little difference between the two. Neither is going to hold up against a nice Sonos speaker or Google Home Max, but they’re about the same volume and quality as the original Amazon Echo and Google Home. Which is great, especially when you’re looking for a speaker that can fill a kitchen with sound while you have all four burners going. Just don’t expect one to be radically better than the other in this department.

Software and Experience

Amazon has been constantly updating its Alexa assistant from day one, adding support for new voice commands and accessories on an almost weekly basis. In this respect, Amazon has a tremendous lead over the competition. Developers went to the most popular platform first, so naturally, it has the most support for the most things. If you have a “smart” something, there’s a good chance it supports Alexa. If you want Alexa to give you information, chances are there’s a third-party feature you can enable to get that information.

The biggest thing separating Alexa from Google Assistant is intuitiveness. Amazon’s third-party features feel added on. You don’t say “Alexa, tell me about car parts that are on sale” but instead say “Alexa, ask PartyPicker to tell me about car parts that are on sale”. That secondary level of communication doesn’t exist on Google Assistant. When you enable a third-party tool, it is treated like something you are asking Google for. It feels like a more natural conversation and makes using the speaker for various things a lot easier because you don’t have to remember the names of every skill.

Netflix is curiously missing from the streaming video list for now.

Assistant is also much better about natively handling multiple commands in a single sentence right now. I can say “OK Google, turn the bedroom lights on and set the thermostat to 72 degrees” as a single sentence and Assistant will execute both of these commands even though they connect to separate services. It’s more natural and polished, which is important when you’re trying to get people who aren’t well-versed techies to use and enjoy your product.

Google and Lenovo have carried that level of polish to the display as well, at least in most places. The visuals for simple things like the weather are more detail-rich than on the Echo Show. You can have your Smart Display pull from Google Photos when idle to act as a digital photo frame. And you have access to way more video services through Android Things than Alexa.

The obvious ones like YouTube and news sources are available, but also HBO Now, Hulu, CBS, and several others through the Google Home app. Netflix is curiously missing from the list for now, and some of the voice instructions are a little limited, so you wind up using your phone, but it’s a serious step forward. These features make it so Lenovo Smart Display is able to act as a proper entertainment platform in rooms where you’d normally hang a small television or bring a tablet with you, and that’s a big deal.

All of that having been said, Amazon has one feature I use daily which currently has no equal on the Lenovo Smart Display. The Alexa Drop-in service allows me to have one-on-one conversations with other Echo devices on my network, and it’s fantastic. I can call the upstairs Echo and tell my kids its time for dinner, or call the Echo Show when I’m at the grocery store and have someone check in on something in the pantry.

Google offers Duo and Broadcast as comparable features, and in my opinion, they aren’t competing right now. No one in my life uses Duo, and while Broadcast is cool for reaching every Google Home device at once it doesn’t have a one-on-one call mode. Which is weird, since I can use my Google Home to make actual phone calls to actual phones with no problem.

Which should you buy? Lenovo Smart Display

While Amazon is clearly the market leader right now, and the Echo Show is constantly being improved, Lenovo has made a beautiful smart display here with a decent speaker in multiple sizes to suit your needs. And it couldn’t be more clear that Google, in addition to offering YouTube and native Google Services integration, is improving the core Assistant functionality much faster than Amazon is improving Alexa. In many areas, it’s not even close, and that’s a big deal.

The Sonos Play:1 isn’t a Bluetooth speaker — it’s much more than that. As part of a whole-home sound system, the Sonos Play:1 is a small and powerful musical conduit that can fill rooms with lush sound. But that’s an investment.

On its own, connected via 3.5mm jack or over Bluetooth, the Sonos Play:1 connects to Alexa, allowing an Echo Dot, either in the same room or another, to send it music commands. The setup is easy thanks to work from both Amazon and Sonos — it just involves hooking the systems together using an Alexa Skill — and it works flawlessly. Plus, at $149, it’s cheaper than some Bluetooth speakers and sounds much, much better.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for the absolute best sound in a small form factor, connect the Sonos Play:1 to your Echo Dot.

One more thing: If you’d rather go Echo-free, the Sonos One has Alexa built right in.

Why the Sonos Play:1 is the best

Sonos makes great-sounding speakers. Always has, likely always will. The beauty of Sonos’s collaboration with Amazon is that a speaker like the Play:1, which may already be part of a dedicated Sonos system, can work independently with any Echo, including the tiny Echo Dot.

That means you can hide the Dot somewhere in a room and have it always listening for commands. “Alexa, play The Beatles,” takes just a second to say, but with a Sonos Play:1 in the room, the two gadgets become more than the sum of their parts. The beauty is that you aren’t connecting the Sonos to the Echo via Bluetooth, so sound coming out of the Play:1 sounds just as good as if you were using the dedicated Sonos app (which you can still do if you want).

While it’s designed to be a Bluetooth speaker to connect your phone, the design and audio quality from the Bose SoundLink Color II speaker makes it perfect for filling most rooms with sound.

You can connect your Amazon Echo Dot to this speaker and leave it forever as a better Amazon Echo, or you can take the $130 Bose Soundlink Color II with you when leaving the house thanks to its internal battery. It’s a great flexible option for just about every occasion and looks nice enough that it can sit in a room without standing out or taking up too much space.

Bottom line: This speaker will turn your Amazon Echo Dot into something better than an Amazon Echo, and does a whole lot more.

One more thing: You can pick up the Bose SoundLink II in either black or white to match your Echo Dot.

Why bother with buying multiple Amazon Echo Dots when you can buy a speaker that powers your single Echo Dot so it can come with you wherever you are in the house? VAUX is one of several speaker designers clever enough to make the body of the speaker something that can actually hold the Echo Dot while in use, so it not only powers the brains of the operation but makes the whole system a single portable unit.

This $50 speaker promises six hours of portable runtime, and the dual 52mm drivers will certainly make this little Echo Dot fill a room with sound. Best of all, you don’t need a different power cord to charge this combined unit. The charger you used to power the Echo Dot is also capable of charging this speaker.

Bottom line: If portability is your goal, this is a great place to start.

The speaker on a taller Amazon Echo is fine, but in larger rooms, it frequently feels a little flat. If your goal is high audio quality so you can stream across an entire house and really rattle the windows, you either want a complete standalone stereo system or you want a Beoplay A6.

Bang & Olufsen is the champion of high-quality audio in portable form, but you pay for the privilege. These speakers are not cheap, but the audio difference couldn’t be more clear when compared to other standalone speakers. While the Beoplay series does come in other, smaller formats that do a good job filling a room with sound, the $799 Beoplay A6 speakers are built for style and room-filling audio. It’s a strange looking speaker for sure, but one of those experiences where you don’t know you can listen to anything else after listening to this.

One more thing: These speakers are available in a bunch of different color fabric options, but tracking something down outside of the standard off-white or textured grey (sorry, Light Gray and Oxidized Brass) isn’t easy.

Conclusion

There are a lot of great options for speakers to add to an Amazon Echo Dot. The Sonos Play:1 is the best of all worlds, since it can exist as a dedicated Echo Dot speaker or as part of a larger Sonos system. The Bose SoundLink Color II is simple — it’s a fantastic Bluetooth speaker that has a 3.5mm input. If your goal is portability over all else, the VAUX is your speaker. And if audio quality is the most important thing to you, grab a B&O Play Beoplay A6 and have a blast.

The Sonos Play:1 isn’t a Bluetooth speaker — it’s much more than that. As part of a whole-home sound system, the Sonos Play:1 is a small and powerful musical conduit that can fill rooms with lush sound. But that’s an investment.

On its own, connected via 3.5mm jack or over Bluetooth, the Sonos Play:1 connects to Alexa, allowing an Echo Dot, either in the same room or another, to send it music commands. The setup is easy thanks to work from both Amazon and Sonos — it just involves hooking the systems together using an Alexa Skill — and it works flawlessly. Plus, at $149, it’s cheaper than some Bluetooth speakers and sounds much, much better.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for the absolute best sound in a small form factor, connect the Sonos Play:1 to your Echo Dot.

One more thing: If you’d rather go Echo-free, the Sonos One has Alexa built right in.

Update, July 2018: The Sonos Play:1 is our new pick for the best speaker for your Echo Dot, and we’ve replaced the Bose SoundLink II with the cheaper, more portable Bose SoundLink Color II. Happy listening!

Google gave us a hardware blitzkrieg at CES. Among other things, the company announced a new smart display category, aimed at taking on the Echo Show through sheer, brute force. The new Show Mode Dock isn’t a direct response, but it’s a clever one.

Two years ago, Amazon introduced Alexa for the Fire tablet line. Last year, the feature went hands-free. In June, all of those additions finally paid off with the addition of Show Mode for the Fire HD 8 and 10, along with the dock, which effectively turns the tablets into an Echo Show. It’s a perfect bit of stream-crossing synergy for the company.

When I met with Amazon prior to release, I asked if the company was afraid of cannibalizing the Show. They seemed unconcerned. Not surprising, really. Hardware has always been secondary to its strategy. The more Alexa devices in the world, the better. That’s really the bottom line here.

For consumers, the form factor makes sense. You can pick up the 8- and 10-inch bundle for $110 and $190, respectively, putting it considerably below the Show’s $230 MSRP (though Amazon sale prices do tend to fluctuate a fair bit). That cost is getting you not only a smart display, but a Fire tablet that can be unhooked and used in all of the standard tablet ways.

In fact, the more I talk about it, the less compelling the Show becomes. It was never a particularly attractive piece of hardware for one that’s meant to be displayed in your home at all times. In fact, it’s got a bit of an unintentional retro RadioShack vibe. It’s also unnecessarily big and bulky — that’s part of what made the much smaller Spot that much more appealing.

Given the new product category and some of the deep discounts it’s been getting in recent months, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a new Show on the way in the not so distant future. In the meantime, however, the device does have a few things going for it versus the tablet/dock combo.

Chief among them are better mics and speakers. Of course, you can always connect the tablet to a Bluetooth speaker (through the app, not over voice yet) to address the latter issue. But for now, if you’re looking for a screen-enabled device that can also double as a small entertainment hub, the Show is probably still a better bet.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that neither the Fire Tablet nor the dock are what anyone would classify as premium devices. Amazon’s efforts to compete on the high end of the tablet market evaporated years ago. The new Fires have decent screens, but otherwise mostly fit the bill of content delivery devices. It’s a strategy that has worked quite well for Amazon, as much of the rest of the tablet category has dried up.

There isn’t a lot to the dock itself. It’s a small bit of plastic with a kickstand that swivels out. There’s a plastic tablet case with two metal pads on the back that snap onto the dock with magnets. A small micro-USB module plugs into the tablet’s port, connecting the two, for data transfer and power, so it can charge while docked.

The key to the whole thing is the addition of Show Mode to the tablet, bringing the same UI you get on the smart display. You can enable it manually on the device by swiping down on the home menu (strangely, this doesn’t seem to be enabled through voice yet). The Mode does away with all of the details of the standard Fire OS, instead defaulting to a large, card-based system.

The Mode is also enabled when the tablet is docked. When you remove it, it reverts back to the standard tablet. Simple.

It all works as advertised. Though again, the speakers aren’t great, and it’s not as good at picking up sounds across the room. Although $40 and $55 for the 8- and 10-inch dock, respectively, is a bit steep, taken together, it’s ultimately a better deal than the Show — and either way, you’re getting a screen larger than the smart display’s 7-inch.

The Show Mode Dock/Fire Tablet combo is really just the all-around better deal. It also starts shipping next week — no word yet on when those Google displays are finally arriving.

In a truly fascinating exploration into two smart speakers – the Sonos One and the Amazon Echo – BoltVC’s Ben Einstein has found some interesting differences in the way a traditional speaker company and an infrastructure juggernaut look at their flagship devices.

The post is well worth a full read but the gist is this: Sonos, a very traditional speaker company, has produced a good speaker and modified its current hardware to support smart home features like Alexa and Google Assistant. The Sonos One, notes Einstein, is a speaker first and smart hardware second.

“Digging a bit deeper, we see traditional design and manufacturing processes for pretty much everything. As an example, the speaker grill is a flat sheet of steel that’s stamped, rolled into a rounded square, welded, seams ground smooth, and then powder coated black. While the part does look nice, there’s no innovation going on here,” he writes.

The Amazon Echo, on the other hand, looks like what would happen if an engineer was given an unlimited budget and told to build something that people could talk to. The design decisions are odd and intriguing and it is ultimately less a speaker than a home conversation machine. Plus it is very expensive to make.

Pulling off the sleek speaker grille, there’s a shocking secret here: this is an extruded plastic tube with a secondary rotational drilling operation. In my many years of tearing apart consumer electronics products, I’ve never seen a high-volume plastic part with this kind of process. After some quick math on the production timelines, my guess is there’s a multi-headed drill and a rotational axis to create all those holes. CNC drilling each hole individually would take an extremely long time. If anyone has more insight into how a part like this is made, I’d love to see it! Bottom line: this is another surprisingly expensive part.

Sonos, which has been making a form of smart speaker for 15 years, is a CE company with cachet. Amazon, on the other hand, sees its devices as a way into living rooms and a delivery system for sales and is fine with licensing its tech before making its own. Therefore to compare the two is a bit disingenuous. Einstein’s thesis that Sonos’ trajectory is troubled by the fact that it depends on linear and closed manufacturing techniques while Amazon spares no expense to make its products is true. But Sonos makes speakers that work together amazingly well. They’ve done this for a decade and a half. If you compare their products – and I have – with competing smart speakers an non-audiophile “dumb” speakers you will find their UI, UX, and sound quality surpass most comers.

Amazon makes things to communicate with Amazon. This is a big difference.

Where Einstein is correct, however, is in his belief that Sonos is at a definite disadvantage. Sonos chases smart technology while Amazon and Google (and Apple, if their HomePod is any indication) lead. That said, there is some value to having a fully-connected set of speakers with add-on smart features vs. having to build an entire ecosystem of speaker products that can take on every aspect of the home theatre.

On the flip side Amazon, Apple, and Google are chasing audio quality while Sonos leads. While we can say that in the future we’ll all be fine with tinny round speakers bleating out Spotify in various corners of our room, there is something to be said for a good set of woofers. Whether this nostalgic love of good sound survives this generation’s tendency to watch and listen to low resolution media is anyone’s bet, but that’s Amazon’s bet to lose.

Whether the coming Sonos IPO will be successful depends partially on Amazon and Google playing ball with the speaker maker. The rest depends on the quality of product and the dedication of Sonos users. This good will isn’t as valuable as a signed contract with major infrastructure players but Sonos’ good will is far more than Amazon and Google have with their popular but potentially intrusive product lines. Sonos lives in the home while Google and Amazon want to invade it. That is where Sonos wins.

I’ve owned an Amazon Echo since December 2015. For almost three years, that black little smart speaker has changed the way I live in my apartment.

But while the Echo has tons of features and skills for all types of needs and situations, I’d argue that Amazon’s line of smart speakers are actually best used in the kitchen.

Whether you treat meals like business or you love cooking, here are 5 ways Amazon Echo can make cooking better, easier, and more fun:

1. Amazon Echo can actually suggest recipes! Just say “What should I cook tonight?” or “What should I make with [insert your favorite foods here]?Alliance/ Shutterstock

If I say “What should I cook tonight?”, Echo will start listing off names of dishes you can make. You can say “learn more” to get the full recipe, or say “next” to get another suggestion of what to cook.

But if you have specific ingredients you want to cook with — like chicken, or potatoes — Alexa can offer specific “top” recipes with those ingredients. And you can also ask to get recipes that use multiple ingredients: If you want to cook with both chicken and ground beef, for example, just say, “Alexa, what should I cook with chicken and ground beef?” and your Echo might recommend a recipe for an Italian wedding soup.

2. Setting multiple timers and forgetting about them is the best.Amazon

If you’re ever wondering how much time you have left, just say “Alexa, how much time is left on my timers?” and it will tell you the time that’s left on all your various timers.

What makes setting timers superior on the Echo is that you can name them, which is incredibly helpful when you’re multitasking — and in the kitchen, that’s often the case.

For example, you can set different timers for foods that are cooking at different speeds: Just say “Alexa, set a broccoli timer for 10 minutes” and “Alexa, set a chicken timer for 25 minutes.” When those timers go off, Alexa will say “your chicken timer is done” and “your broccoli timer is done.” Being able to set and name your timers, all hands-free, makes it much easier to keep track of everything you’re cooking.

3. Amazon Echo can also manage your shopping list.Reuters

Did you just run out of garlic? Maybe you need more butter? Just say, “Alexa, add [insert food here] to the shopping list” and Echo will add that item to your shopping list, which you can access in the Alexa app on your phone.